


I Am Not Abnegation

by iszy_chan



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Body Paint, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Partying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iszy_chan/pseuds/iszy_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tris doesn't quite feel like a part of Dauntless just yet, but that completely changes when Four organises a party in the Pit, with alcohol, dancing, and the whole canvern filled with music.</p><p>For the best reading experience, listen to the mix I made to go with it on 8tracks; http://m.8tracks.com/iszy-chan/divergent-dauntless-party-music (the playlist is in the notes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Not Abnegation

The heavy base is the first thing I hear as I approach the Pit. Its beats are heavy, pounding loudly in my chest, coarsing through my whole body, the deep noise filling my ears and defeaning me, reaching from my head to my toes where it seems to shake the earth. I realise that the volume is louder, there are more voices and shouts--meaning more people--and there is a bright buzz of happiness and energy in the air. Whatever is happening is a special occasion, and I pick up my pace to reach the enterance to the wide cavern. 

A purple light passes over the opening, filling the dark tunnel I hurry down with a deep purple blaze, the walls and floor drenched in colour. If I were wearing white, I know it would glow under the UV light, and I feel myself involunterily grin as I reach the opening, sucking in a breath of surprise through my teeth. 

Long rows of lights hang from the ceiling, casting spoitlights of red, green, yellow, orange, blue, purple, and just about every other colour. I can't see the speakers, but with this much sound pumping through my body, I fail to see how they could conceal them. It makes me want to dance, but Abnegation doesn't dance. 

_But you're not Abnegation._

The lights are mainly focused on the centre of the Pit, which seems to see the main location for dancing, so many bodies pressed up against each other and fitting together I fail to see seperate people, let alone recognise the faces. Everyone else fills the rest of the room, most people crowding around tall, thin tables that look like latte glasses turned on their heads, although there doesn't seem to be enough room for people anyway, let alone move around. 

As soon as I set a foot in the cavern a hand covered in green paint slaps my cheek, but not hard enough to hurt, other hands reaching towards me through the bodies pressed around me to smear, dot and print shapes all across my dark clothes in different colours of paint that cling to my clothes, shining and glowing under the lights. 

But I don't see the hands as a threat--this is my faction, my home, they would not hurt me in an environment where everyone else is having fun an enjoying themselves, and there's only a small handful of people who would hurt me regardless of the surroundings.

I find Christina beside a latte table leaning against Will, who both seem to be in complete hysterics at seeing me being slathered in paint by unknown faces. Satisfied with their work, the hands move away as they go to find new targets, and I am left to weave through the thick crowds of people coated in just as much paint as me, most drinking and laughing, not bothering to notice me slip past. 

Just as I reach Christina and Will, I feel a paintbrush against my back and I cannot turn in time to catch the perpetrator. Instead I swivel around, Christina now laughing harder. She has pink paint smeared across her chin and lips and leans forward, pressing her lips to my cheek to leave behind the pink paint. Will also pecks my cheek, his lips unpainted, instead half his face covered in blue paint. 

"It says _kiss me,"_ Christina explains, my bewildered expression making her cry with laughter. "Make sure Four doesn't see that on your back! I've seen him with Eric, they've had just as many drinks as everyone else, perhaps even a few more!" She nudges my arm suggestively and I try to glare at her, but I feel the buzz of being with Dauntless, being painted as if I am finally one of them, and I can't help but laugh with her. 

"Can you believe this?" Will yells over the music, grinning. "Paintballing is one thing, but this is insane! No tests, no rules, just have fun and throw paint at each other!" Someone runs past and slaps his shoulder, an orange handprint left. I quickly acquire a green handprint on my back and a long blue smear down one arm, all awhile Christina is on the floor, her hand in Will's pocket, desperately trying to keep herself upright from laughing so hard. 

"And they're letting us drink!" She straightens up, successfully composing herself, three shot glasses appearing on our latte table. They both immediately knock the glasses back, and I reluctantly take mine. 

_Not Abnegation._

It tastes fizzy, the bubbles stinging my tongue, and alcohol--or at least the taste I've assosciated with the smell of alcohol. It buzzes through my veins, and I laugh, suddenly feeling giddy. 

People around us suddenly shriek with joy, their heads turning to the ceiling, and I look up just as something cold and wet hits my face. I close my eyes, letting the raindrops land on my face, my arms, my clothes, but it is not rain.

I open my eyes.

Christina has blue and green freckles all over her face, and Will has the same, two rings around his eyes where he covered them, like a sunbather wearing sunglasses and getting a tan line around them.

Both of us burst out laughing at him and I drag my hands through my hair to find it thick and smeared with paint. But despite how many of the colours seemed to swirl together across our clothes, none of them mixed, every colour seperate. I know this isn't normal paint--not only this, but it feels almost dry, not soaking my clothes or making them feel heavy. 

Someone runs past spinning a paintbrush over their head, spraying us with yellow paint. Christina shrieks again, grinning. "This is insane!" She yells, just as three more drinks find their way to our table. We all down them, the music now coursing through my veins just like the drink as if it is now a part of me. "And now, to dance!" She commands, seizing Will's arm. He doesn't protest, but I shake my head, grinning as I watch her tow him to the tightly packed area of dancers, Christina's moves instantly fitting to the song, her hips swaying to the beat, pulling Will's hands to her hips, guiding him and showing him how to move. 

I get high-fived with purple paint, smearing my left hand, and I pass on the high-five so a chain of people now all have purple left hands. 

Someone's hand suddenly squeezes my behind and I spin around, my first instincts to slap them. 

Four gets a purple handprint on his cheek, but he still grins like an idiot. 

He left a pink handprint in his hand's place on my backside. 

I then mush my hand across his face so it is nearly all covered in purple, half-glaring, half-grinning at him. He laughs against my hand, his breath warm but not humid like the air around me. 

"You assh--"

He ducks forward before I can stop him, pressing his lips against mine, long and slow, his hands against my waist. When he pulls away, he's grinning innocently. "Your back told me to."

"My back told you to kiss me, not slap my ass and leave pink paint there like I'm some kind of attention-seeking whore!" I grin, I just can't stop myself now. "Anyway, Christina and Will beat you to it." I tap the pink lip print on my cheek and I turn to find them, only to see them grinding against each other, completely immersed in the music. "Well."

"Let's go join in," Four announces, taking my hand, towing me towards the space of tightly packed bodies. 

"Nu-uh, I do not dance!" I protest, digging my heels into the ground even though I know he is stronger. "I will not dance with you, understand?"

"Come on, it's just like fighting, you just don't try to kill me." He raises his hand, poking someone in the back who has green paint smeared down it, spreading the paint across my cheeks in two lines. "You even have your war paint now!"

I grit my teeth, Abnegation or not, I have never danced in my life. "No."

He shrugs, bending down. I scream when he hauls me over his shoulder, but everyone else is screaming louder and do not hear. I grab fistfuls of his rainbow shirt--I don't completely trust him to not drop me considering how much he's probably had to drink. He gently sets me on the ground when we reach the dancefloor, just as a new song starts as if he were planning his timing all along. 

It seems he did, because he grins at the song, the glint in his dark eyes telling me that he knows every single word of it, and he refuses to not sing along. The bass isn't as heavy as the previous songs, the main focus on the vocals and the drums, and the clapping which everyone quickly joins in with. 

_"When Rome's in ruins, we are the lions, free of the coliseums."_

He puts his hands on my waist, moving the pair of us to the light beat and the sound of everyone around us clapping. 

_"Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds, it's all over now before it has begun, we've already won!"_

He tips his head back, mouth hanging open on the high note he seems to somehow reach and hold.

_"We are-- wild! We are like young volcanoes!"_

I laugh, his voice is just as mind-melting as it is singing than just talking, perhaps even better. He hits the notes nearly all perfect, a few slip ups here and there due to his intoxicated state.

_"We are-- wild! Americana, exotica, do you wanna feel a little beautiful baby, yeah!"_

I now move my hips to the music on my own, his hands now following my movements, matching our dance together. My hands find the air above us, my arms bent at the elbows, my fingers moving as if they are modelling clay, and I don't feel stupid, I don't feel like I'm doing something wrong, it feels perfect and right.

I'm dancing.

Four's voice is still in my ear, loudly singing along to every word, his body now pressed against mine as we fight for space around us to dance in. I eventually know the chorus so join in when it's time, holding on the notes with my cheek pressed to Four's, our singing overly loud and not exactly in tune, but I don't care. 

I'm singing.

And it's the greatest feeling in the world. 

_"Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds, it's all over now, before it has begun, we've already won!"_

_"We are-- wild! We are like young volcanoes!"_

_"We are-- wild! Americana, exotica, do you wanna feel a little beautiful baby, yeah!"_

The chorus continues to play, allowing us to continue singing at the top of our lungs, our bodies pressed together and our hands linked in the air, feeling the heavy pound on feet on the floor beneath us from people jumping to the beat. 

We sing over-the-top until the song ends, but another immediately takes its place, so we continue dancing. Behind me, the person's back is dripping with bright orange paint that hasn't dried yet, so I cover my hands in it, turning back to Four and slapping my hands against his chest, leaving two bright handprints. 

"That's for printing on my ass!" I yell triumphantly, and Four falls about laughing, knowing that I wouldn't ever hit his ass, even if he did it to me. 

Someone behind us yells above the noise and others join in, so I turn to look. There is a crowd forming at the enterance to the Pit, masses of people covered in paint fighting to get to the front. 

I turn to ask Four what it is, but he is already diving into the crowd, grinning again. 

"Guessing by that handprint, I'd say a very drunk Four found you," Christina observes from beside me, making me jump. "I hear there's food over there, no idea what. I sent Will in to get me some."

I grin. "You two looked like you were having fun."

"Oh, we _were."_ She drapes her arm across my shoulders and I nearly fall over laughing at the rude drawings painted all up her arm in blue paint. "They pinned me down," she says defensively, "and Will was laughing too hard to stop them! I swear it was Eric who told them, he was sniggering out of the corner of my eye."

A smell suddenly catches my nose--cheese, pepper, chicken, bacon, and... tomato sauce?

"Say _ah."_ Four is behind me, this time without his hands where they shouldn't be. I open my mouth, confused, and he pops the end of a triangular piece of bread donned in different toppings into my mouth. I bite down, barely stopping my eyes from closing in sheer joy--it tastes like heaven. Triangular, tomato-based heaven. 

"Pizza," Four explains to me, taking a bite of nearly half of his slice. Christina grins at it, disappearing into the crowd to see if Will had gotten her some. I take another bite. 

"This is..."

"Amazing, awesome, fantastic, like you've just pulled a slice of cloud from heaven, baked it and eaten it?"

I nod, no time for talking as I take another bite from the slice. 

"Didn't have this in Abnegation, either." I realise that it is a statement not a question; Dauntless was his first time eating it too.

○●○●○

It is well into the morning and people are still drinking, dancing and laughing, but Dauntless' entire paint supply thankfully ran out at midnight along with all the pizza, so all the paint in my hair and on my clothes has dried. The pizza was in a range of flavours, and in the end I had managed to nab four slices to eat, Four managing six. 

As the crowd dies down and people begin to leave, realising we will all have either training or work in a few hours and we all need a shower, Four and I find an abandoned latte table. He hoists me onto it so I am now a head taller, for once leaning down to kiss him, my small hands either side of his face. I run my fingers through his hair, knotted from the bright pink paint, the colour long dry and making it crust and harden in clumps.

I rest my face against his florescent shoulder, exhaustion finally catching up to me, breathing in the smell of alcohol, pizza, sweat and paint. 

I don't know how he did it, but the party came at just the right time to make me feel welcome, and truely a part of Dauntless. "Thank you," I whisper, knowing he had some part in organising it. He hums in response, somehow hearing me over the still-blaring music, his throat vibrating against my cheek. 

"Training in a few hours," he mumbles, both his warm hands pressed against my back, making me feel like it's keeping him more upright than me. "Get ready for your first ever hangover."

I smile tiredly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "It'll be more bearable if you don't wash that pink out."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Song list hell yea  
> Lost and found (ODESZA remix) -- pretty lights  
> I cant stop -- flux pavilion   
> Lets go for tonight -- foxes   
> Young volcanoes (you'll know when to start playing this one, trust me) -- fall out boy  
> Where did the party go -- fall out boy  
> Beyond monday -- the glitch mob  
> We can make the world stop -- the glitch mob  
> Toy story -- david guetta  
> Death valley -- fall out boy  
> Wild one too -- david guetta


End file.
